Harold Pinter's Betrayal, a play about a married couple dealing with an affair, is renowned for its reverse chronology and its ability to find meaning in unspoken words. The play follows Robert and Emma, and the affair she has with his best friend Jerry, starting in the present and working backwards. It asks the audience to engage actively, piecing together what each character knows or doesn't know over time.
Hannah Patterson, author of the novel Ungone, first encountered Betrayal through reading it before seeing it on stage. She was struck by its spareness and economy, noting how taut the language is and how silence fills the room with energy and drama. 'I immediately thought: this is how I want to write,' she says, praising the play for leaving much for actors to interpret and for the weight of both words and silences.
The play expects a level of engagement from its audience, challenging them to work for meaning rather than passively consume. Patterson also highlights the 'privileged information' viewers have over the characters, and how it demonstrates the unreliability of memory—such as when Jerry and Emma disagree about where he threw her child in the air. 'This idea of the stories that we tell ourselves that stick and feel like truth' resonates deeply.
Patterson notes the strong sense of place in Betrayal, particularly in Kilburn, north-west London, where the characters' flat is located. She recalls two notable productions: the 2007 Donmar Warehouse version with Samuel West, Dervla Kirwan and Toby Stephens, which used sweeping white curtains to convey the passage of time; and Jamie Lloyd's 2019 version with Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox, which kept all characters on stage throughout, emphasising the personal toll of their actions.
The influence of Betrayal is evident in Patterson's own work. 'Its influence is there in my first novel Ungone, seeping into the way I've approached fiction,' she explains. Her characters speak precisely but with myriad meanings, and the internal dialogue reveals what they do not say. For Patterson, 'everything feels true in Betrayal, everything resonates.'
